Marjorie Prime - Menier Chocolate Factory

Only 85! The lovely Anne Reid trying to get away with playing a younger woman again.

I liked the film well enough, intrigued by this.

Anyone caught this yet? I'm seeing it on Friday and am quite excited as it sound very interesting and is a terrific cast.

Aside, I think the thread title is misspelt as I could easily find the thread, its Marjorie as opposed to Majorie.

Any idea of running time for this? Can't find it on Menier's website.

Saw this tonight and LOVED it. I booked for the actors, who are wonderful in this, and found that I was moved by the play: it reflects profoundly on what it means to be human: the role of memory, family relationships, hopes and dreams, as well as what it will be like to relate to artificial intelligence in the future.

Some spoilers follow. . .

So as not to get anyone's hopes up, I will confess that an old acquaintance found the play "monotone" and was annoyed by the narrow bench seating (she was overwhelmed on both sides by individuals who were larger than the narrow space they were allotted) and a new acquaintance felt short-changed by the running time (at 75 minutes straight through, some ten minutes shorter than advertised) which he felt underexploited the interesting themes touched upon.

I myself absolutely loved this from start to finish, and unexpectedly found myself in tears on multiple occasions, sometimes laughing through tears.

The set-up has Anne Reid's Marjorie, who has Alzheimers, relating to an artificial intelligence in the form of her husband, Walter, as he was at 30, played by Richard Fleeshman. Her daughter, Nancy Carroll's brittle Tess, is none too pleased, but her husband, Tony Jayawardena's kindly Jon, convinces her that they cannot always be there for Marjorie, and the AI can remember and restore memories to Marjorie as her mind fails her.

From here, the plot takes many head spinning twists and turns, such that I was never sure who is the main character, or if the play even has one lol. But it's the themes that resonated for me:

(1) the importance of memories;
(2) whether pleasant fake memories are better than real unpleasant ones;
(3) can machines be human?;
(4) are humans machines?;
(5) can AIs be like beloved pets, loved ones that never critique us and always pay us attention?;
(6) is that a good thing?;
(7) in a meta way, are the actors (pretending to be other people to share emotions and ideas with us) in front of us doing for us exactly what AI does for their characters?;
(8) if we die when the last person who knew us does, then do we live even longer if an AI knows us;
(9) are we more the real events that happen to us or the hopes and dreams we wish would happen to us?

That one short play evokes so many profound questions and themes is remarkable, and the actors playing the parts are remarkable: Anne Reid evokes such a wealth of life lived, as well as the loss of it that dementia threatens, while simultaneously displaying pin sharp comic timing; Fleeshman's AI is at once robotic and immensely charming; Jayawardena creates in Tony a warm fragility that feels like the best of us; and aspects of Nancy Carroll's outwardly tough, inwardly fragile character reminded me so much of her Olivier award winning performance in "After the Dance."

I thought this was terrific, but let the experiences of my acquaintances serve as a warning that you may not agree with me lol. 5 stars from me.

Theatre called me in the past hour to say that tonight's show is cancelled due to illness. Disappointing, but managed to get £25 Rush tickets for The Great Britain Bake-Off instead.

I was supposed to be going tonight’s performance but have just been notified that it’s cancelled too. A shame as I was looking forward to it, but also secretly a bit happy that I don’t have to leave my house in the wind!

I saw this last week. Very interesting play with great acting. I had seen Anne Reid on stage before but was not aware of Nancy Carroll (I saw her years ago at The talking cure but did not remember her), I really liked her performance.

It is well written play with an interesting topic, well directed, great set and lighting. I hope it will be seen by many, not sure if it will have potential for a transfer though.

It was on seat filler websites last week - I'm waiting for it to pop up again and then will go see it.

Thoroughly thoughtful (and thought provoking) nevertheless this was more a sequence of tableaux rather than a properly worked through drama; almost by definition we never really get to do more than cooly observe the characters and their situation, as distinct from becoming properly involved with them - and at 80 mins there was plenty of time left to do so. Really excellent performances all round, and I'm glad to have seen it, but in the end it felt rather unsatisfying - as most (currently fashionable) 80 mins plays so often do...

I'm a computer programmer by trade. In my 30s, I discovered the power of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) to reprogram my own brain to overcome some serious mental health issues. With that back story, little did I realise that Marjorie Prime would play directly to subjects that fascinate me.

Although it's good to know nothing before going in, it was instantly clear that all was not right with Richard Fleeshman's stilted Walter. Channeling a cross between Max Headroom and Jimmy Carr, he had either embraced that plastic way of acting beloved of American daytime soaps, or he was doing a fine turn as an automaton. I'm being facetious: it was self-evidently the latter. Well, I wasn't expecting that.

Before long, there are a few more twists and turns, and the juxtaposition of the human and the artificial makes for some insightful comparisons as to what, if anything, is actually real about us, and what can be said to be unreal about the machines. We are firmly in the territory of Blade Runner and its equally brilliant sequel.

In those films, the deconstruction of the human psyche concludes that humans and machines are ultimately no different: programmed needs and innate ones amount to the same thing. Here, playwright Jordan Harrison seems to imply that maybe it's the machines that excel and the humans that are broken. What makes us human, with the need for human connection, is to be flawed and to so often fail at basic human interaction.

This piece could not work though without the steadily assured hand of director Dominic Dromgoole and master classes in acting from each member of the cast of four, which are worth the price of admission regardless of the somewhat slight narrative.

This is a strong four stars from me. Ideally, I'd have liked something a little longer and more in depth -- maybe the film version that I will now seek out delivers that? -- and I was rather distracted by the odd video backdrop that lies beyond the living room window. Rather than seat this parallel to the glass, the set designer has set it at an angle, flush with the rear wall of the stage. This creates a bizarrely unnatural perspective effect between scenes when the video image is wiped downwards as a sort of proxy for the curtain. That irked me far more than it should have, but I can be a bit too mechanical in my thinking sometimes.

Four stars.

One act: 19:36-20:50
(There is what felt like a skipped interval break after, I think, the third scene, at the 48-minute mark. I'm not sure if anything was gained by ploughing straight on.)